Skip to main content
Dessert

Dried Sour Apples, with Dried Black Raspberries

A preserved fruit mixture of dried sour apples and dried black raspberries simmered with water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dried Sour Apples, with Dried Black Raspberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the apples and raspberries lightly.

  2. Soak the apples and raspberries separately overnight in enough water to cover them.

Cook

  1. In the morning, place the apples in a pot with the soaking water and add more water to cover them.

  2. Cover the pot and bring to a boil, stirring gently to ensure even cooking.

  3. When the apples are half cooked, add the raspberries along with their juice.

  4. Once the apples are tender, add sugar to taste and let everything simmer for half an hour until it reaches a rich color.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried sour apples
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender fruit base when simmered.
Dried black raspberries
Add tart flavor and deep color, releasing juice that colors the simmering liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the sour apples and raspberries.

The step that matters

Adding the raspberries at half-cooked apples. Raspberries break down quickly under heat, so adding them too early can turn them mushy and dull the flavor. Adding them once the apples are half cooked lets the fruit keep some shape while the juice mingles with the simmering liquid.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes